The PhD in Mathematics from the UB Ariadna Farrés (Barcelona, ??1981) is a specialist in astrodynamics at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). There he works with the flight dynamics and mission design team on projects such as Space Weather Follow On and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, two telescopes that will go to the L1 and L2 Lagrange points. Farrés is participating today in the day of Barcelona City Council and the Catalan Mathematical Society to promote scientific vocations.
When did you become interested in mathematics?
At school, but from high school. In primary school it was all about addition and subtraction, and I didn’t like that. I started to like them when I saw that I could solve problems in an ingenious way.
Why do so many schoolchildren have a mania for mathematics? What’s wrong with them not being interested?
The connection is missing. Mathematics is something very abstract and when they explain it at school you need to understand its usefulness, where it can be applied. You try to see them from the point of view of the game, but I don’t know if that helps or not. What I like is that they are something logical, that help you understand why things happen and solve problems. Mathematics, for example, explains science.
He says that in school they don’t convey the usefulness of it, but in society mathematics is everywhere. Today, mathematicians are highly sought-after professionals. Is it contradictory?
There is a great lack of mathematics teachers and perhaps many professionals who explain them do not have the training in mathematics or are not passionate about them, and this means that they explain them with little energy, which does not help you to like them.
In general, schoolboys don’t like math, girls seem to dislike it even less. There is a big gap and it has been widening in recent years.
When I studied mathematics it was 50%-50%. And now it has been changing. When I was studying, most of the women went to teach, to teach in institutes. They, on the other hand, were looking for more consulting outputs, more techniques. Now the default exit from mathematics is more technical disciplines, and perhaps women are less attracted to them. It seems that when scientific careers become more technical or have a less direct return to society, this causes them to be pulled back a bit. I think this is the reason why the gap between boys and girls in mathematics studies has widened.
How did you jump from mathematics to the aerospace field?
Because I had always been interested in space, I always liked it. I didn’t study aerospace engineering because in my time it wasn’t in the collective imagination and I don’t think there were any careers of this type in Barcelona. I liked the mats and I entered that race. When I finished it, I had to look for a job, I wasn’t sure where I wanted to end up, and I started my doctorate at the UB, where they had studied and applied the mathematics of space.
How did you get to NASA?
In 2016, I went there to spend a four-month summer stay while I waited to be offered a teaching position at the university here. My goal was to be a researcher at university. I came back, but they didn’t give me that position. Then the opportunity arose to go back to work at NASA: I was offered to continue the project I had started and those four months turned into six years.
Tell us what it’s like to work at NASA.
The part I like best is that its environment is interdisciplinary. Teams with the same goal, each from their specialty. In the end, it’s a job like any other: if the goal is to put this in space, you take care of the design of the trajectory, another of designing the satellite, the one of how we’re going to talk to the satellite , that other one we want to see with the satellite…
What does your job consist of?
I am dedicated to trajectory design and maneuver planning. Essentially: if we want to get a satellite to a certain point in space, how do we do it, trajectory, maneuvers to get to that point with the least cost or the least time… And then you have to maintain it in orbit, for which I design maneuvers, the timeline of the mission.
It is also part of the Hypatia space project. What does your job there consist of?
The Hypatia is a project with which we aim to encourage scientific vocations among girls, especially to create scientific benchmarks and make some progress in space exploration, to analyze the conditions for one day being able to send a mission to Mars. I was part of the first crew as one of the scientists, responsible for health and safety. Now, on Hypatia II, I will be the commander, since one of the requirements is that at least one of the people must have been there before, and it is me.
If you could, would you like to go to Mars?
Personally, no. I would love to go to space, go to the Moon. Mars right now I consider it a very long, very dangerous journey.
She is usually mentioned as an example of young, female, Catalan talent. And why is there so much scientific talent working abroad?
Because there are not as many opportunities here as we would like. In the case of the aerospace sector, it is just beginning in Spain. In other words, the talent is there, the education is good, there are good teachers… But it depends on what you want to do, there is no ecosystem here to stay. That’s why we’re going out. Although, well, it’s not that critical either. In other words, it is true that we should encourage or do something for people to stay, but we should also bring in talent from outside.
How should girls be encouraged to have scientific vocations?
I would like all of them to be afraid to encourage themselves to do anything. Maybe one of the things I’ve seen in myself is that when I’ve had an idea or wanted to do certain things, I’ve always had the feeling that I won’t be able to and that holds you back.
